In the course of reviewing movies in the early 2000s, just as computer-generated special effects were becoming radically sophisticated and were also, increasingly, becoming the chief selling point of big-ticket movies, I found myself more and more often invoking the name of Ray Harryhausen, who died on Tuesday, May 7,…
In his new film, the social drama At Any Price, director and co-writer Ramin Bahrani examines how the transformation of food into intellectual property through seed patents has corrupted, impoverished or dissolved the American family farm. As with the Iranian-American director’s previous films (Man Push Cart, Chop Shop, Goodbye Solo),…
Uwe Boll will no longer fight you — at least, not with his fists. Often lambasted by critics as the worst of the worst, Boll once literally got into the boxing ring with four film bloggers, but these days, he prefers to combat negative press with what he claims are…
All semester, students at the Colorado Film School have been writing, developing and producing their own original short films. Tonight they’ll unveil these projects to the public at the Spring 2013 Student Show, an opportunity to present their films in high resolution on the big screen. “The nicest thing is…
A young woman with a supernatural talent for finding things goes looking for trouble and discovers it in the form of a monstrous man who uses children for his own dark ends. This is the plot of Joe Hill’s new novel NOS4A2. The best-selling horror novelist’s third tale delves into…
Part biopic, part fabled rock tale, Greetings From Tim Buckley, opening tonight at the Sie FilmCenter, tells the story of the connection between the singer, who died in 1975 at the age of 28, and his son, Jeff Buckley, who never knew his famous father. Set in New York City,…
With her menagerie of voices and characters and keen insight into human psychology, comedian Maria Bamford has been a darling of fans of smart, eccentric humor since the early 1990s. Bamford began her career while in college, and her cartoonish portrayals of secretarial and temporary work, as well as glimpses…
When Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala started their epic Raiders of the Lost Ark remake, they were a pair of preteens with limitless ambition and absolutely zero idea how to make a movie. By the time they’d finished Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation seven years and several near-catastrophes…
The ever-changing RiNo Art District continues to grow and prosper, which means this year’s seventh annual RiNo Art Safari promises more stops and diversions than ever before. The event, which began as a series of art-studio open houses, has grown to include dozens of galleries and creative spaces, as well…
It’s been fourteen dog years since the last Lucky Mutt Strut, but the 5K fun run and walk, which benefits the MaxFund No-Kill Animal Shelter and Adoption Center, will return today after having skipped 2012. The 25-year-old MaxFund gives cats and dogs a “second leash” on life, placing more than…
What could a fresh coat of paint, live music and a comfortable place to enjoy a meal outdoors do for a block in your neighborhood? The second annual Better Block project — this year focusing generally on Five Points, and specifically on 24th Street between California and Welton — aims…
“I’m not gonna lie about it,” Buntport Theater’s Brian Colonna says of his autobiographical play, A Knight to Remember: My Quest to Gallantly Recapture the Past. “I’ll just come out and say the conceit is that the other members of Buntport thought it was a bad idea, so they wouldn’t…
A recent Facebook thread carried a passionate argument about whether childbirth was ecstatic or hideously painful. “Painful” voters found the ecstatic folk smug; the ecstatics hinted that the painful contingent were insufficiently maternal. Apparently Motherhood Out Loud, an evening of linked monologues on the theme of motherhood, comes down on…
You might never have given a second thought to the culture of trees growing on the University of Colorado campus in Boulder, but veteran groundsman Alan Nelson, who’s been caring for them for years, thinks they’re more than just trees. That’s why every spring and fall, he takes a break…
When Baltimore burlesque artist Paco Fish quit his day job to pursue performing, it resulted in serious financial repercussions: His home went into foreclosure. But Fish saw it as an opportunity, loading his entire life into a van and embarking on a 52-week burlesque tour of the U.S. and Canada…
Olivier Assayas’s gorgeous, freewheeling, semi-autobiographical Something in the Air is an ode to both youth’s universal qualities and the specifics of Assayas’s youth in particular. The picture opens in the suburbs just outside Paris in 1971, among a group of teenage students still energized by the explosive student and worker…
Local sculptor Yoshitomo Saito’s new bronze installation, Bemsha Swing in Denver, refers to the Thelonious Monk composition “Bemsha Swing,” in a funny way: via his own mystification at reading the drily notated Wikipedia description of the jazz standard. “Because of my inability to comprehend this Wikipedia explanation for my favorite…
Denver comic Ben Roy is relentless. Since his first album, I Got Demons, was released last summer, Roy has performed countless shows with both his band and his comedy team, the Grawlix – which has received glowing reviews for its Amazon-produced pilot Those Who Can’t. This week, Roy recorded a…
Fans of both Jane Austen and musicals should be thrilled that the Denver Center Theatre Company is launching the world premiere of Sense and Sensibility: The Musical tonight. The novel, which follows the Dashwood sisters — Elinor and Marianne — as they fall in love and out of love and…
Yes, Día de los Muertos takes place in early November, but celebrating the holiday in the spring — the season of rebirth — made perfect sense to the group of artists putting together Muertos in May, an art extravaganza at the Bonacquisti Wine Company. “The skulls are symbolic; they remind…
And you thought you had it bad when your mom said, “No cookies until after dinner”…at least your mother didn’t devour her young! According to Brian Aucone, vice president for animal care at the Denver Zoo, a wide variety of animals have been documented killing and occasionally cannibalizing their children…
Tracy Weil is a master at the art of breathing life into ideas. He calls it branding, and that’s the business end of his skill, but it’s also about being engaged in the community, which is what makes it so special. An artist, urban agriculturist, designer and Westword MasterMind, Weil…
